scalability Archives - AUTOMATION INSIGHTS

Who Moved My Data? Part 2: Insourcing Condition Monitoring

In my previous blog on this topic, “Who Moved My Data? Outsourcing Condition Monitoring,” I established the case for condition-based monitoring of critical assets to ensure a reduction in unplanned downtime. I also explored the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing condition monitoring from critical assets. Here I discuss the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to condition monitoring and explore its advantages and disadvantages.

Understanding the DIY approach

Now, let me be clear to avoid any confusion, when I refer to “do it yourself,” I don’t mean literally doing it yourself. Instead, this is something you own and customize to fit your applications. It may require a fair amount of input from your maintenance teams and plants. It’s not a one-day job, of course, but an ongoing initiative to help improve productivity and have continuous improvements throughout the plant.

Advantages and disadvantages of DIY condition monitoring (insourcing)

Implementing the solutions for continuous condition monitoring of critical assets by yourself has many advantages, along with some disadvantages. Let’s review them.

Advantages of insourcing (DIY) condition monitoring:

1. Data ownership: One of the greatest benefits or advantages of implementing the DIY approach to condition monitoring is the control it gives you over data. You decide where the data lives, how it is used, and who has access to it. As I emphasized in my previous blog and numerous presentations on this topic, “Data is king” – a highly valuable commodity.
2. Flexibility and customization: Of course, the DIY solution is not a one-size-fits-all approach! Instead, it allows you to customize the solution to fit your exact needs – the parameters to monitor, the specific areas of the plant to focus on the critical systems and the method of monitoring. You choose how to implement the solutions to fit your plant’s budget.
3. Low long-term costs: As you own the installations, you own the data and you own the equipment; you don’t need to pay rent for the systems implemented through outsourcing.
4. The specification advantage: As a plant or company, you can add condition monitoring features as specifications for your next generation of machines and equipment, including specific protocols or components. This allows you to collect the required data from the machine or equipment from the get-go.

Disadvantages of insourcing (DIY) condition monitoring:

1. High upfront cost: Implementing condition monitoring with a data collection system may involve higher upfront costs. This is because there is a need to invest in data storage solutions, engage experts for condition monitoring implementation (typically from an integration house or through self-integration), and employ developers to create or customize dashboards to fit user needs.
2. Limited scalability: collecting more data requires additional storage and enhanced analytics capabilities, especially when transitioning from condition-based maintenance to predictive analytics. Designing your own solution with limited budgets may hamper the scalability of the overall system.
3. Infrastructure maintenance: This is another area that requires close attention. Whether the infrastructure is located on-premises, centralized, or in the cloud, the chosen location may require investments in manpower for ongoing maintenance.

Another point to emphasize here is that opting for a DIY solution does not preclude the use of cloud platforms for data management and data storage. The difference between insourcing and outsourcing lies in the implementation of condition monitoring and related analytics – whether it’s carried out and owned by you or by someone else.

Strategic decision-making: beyond cost considerations

The final point is not to make outsourcing decisions solely based on cost. Condition-based monitoring and the future of analytics offer numerous advantages, and nurturing an in-house culture could be a great source of competitive advantage for the organization. You can always start small and progressively expand.

As always, your feedback is welcome.

What does that “Ready for IIoT” tag really mean?

These days almost every smart industrial device that comes to the market is advertised as “ready for IIoT.” But what does it actually mean? Before we get too technical, we should look at what the objectives are for IIoT and why it is important to the industrial age of our time.

In a previous post, “The promise of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)“, we highlighted features such as Virtual IP address, to help address several things that plant maintenance and management would like to achieve. This blog touches those topics in a different perspective.

The concept of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or Industry 4.0, applies to the future of industrial automation, and these concepts heavily rely on the interoperability of a wide variety of devices and systems that communicate large amounts of data. This data is important because IIoT promises superior efficiency of machines and personalized manufacturing. Personalized manufacturing – also known as micro batch production or lot size one – means connecting with the customers at an individual level rather than connecting to masses. If efficiency and customization in production are the end goals or prime objectives for IIoT, these questions must be answered: What type of data would be necessary? Where and how is that data obtainable? In other words, what are the capabilities or characteristics of the device or system that really qualify as being “ready for IIoT”? Does simply providing an Ethernet connection to the device or adding a webserver qualify the device for IIoT? The answer is NO!

In my opinion, the following 5 key characteristics/capabilities, depending of course on the end user’s objectives, would qualify for being “ready for IIoT” tag.

If an end-user of automation wants to run the plant efficiently, the device or system should be able to provide information regarding; (1) Condition Monitoring, and (2) Automatic Parameterization

Condition Monitoring enables predictive maintenance and eliminates unplanned downtime. Is the PLC or automation controller the right place for determining predictive maintenance? Maybe not. The PLC should focus on making sure the system is running effectively. Adding more non-application related stuff to the PLC may disrupt what is truly important. In most cases you would need a different PC or server to do this pattern analysis throughout the plant. A system or device with the “ready for IIoT” tag should be able to collect and provide that information to a higher level controls system/server. An example would be a power supply with IO-Link. Through the IO-Link master it tells the system about the stress or ambient temperature and predicts its lifetime.
Automatic configuration or parameterization of sensors and systems. This feature enables plug-n-play benefit so that replacing devices is easy and the system automatically configures the replaced device to reduce downtime.

As IT and Controls Engineering work closer together, there are other characteristics of the devices that become important.

Configurability of sensors and production line beyond controller of the system: Automation controllers in use today have physical limits of memory and logic. Today manufacturers are running multiple batches of different products on the same line which means more change over and more downtime. If the devices could allow for quick line change configurations such as set point changes for your sensors, different pressures on fluids, different color detections for the parts or even the ability to provide you with detection of the physical format change, that would significantly reduce your changeover times. In a PLC or controller, you can only build logic for factors known today (for ex. the number of configurations), but in the near future there will be additional product configurations. To be truly ready for the IIoT, you need devices that can be configured (with proper authorizations) in multiple ways. A webserver might be one of the ways – but that also has its limitations. Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is widely used with several of the network management software tools in the IT world. OPC UA is another open communication protocol in industrial space. JSON is a protocol for cloud interface among many others. A device that can offer connectivity, via SNMP, OPC UA, JSON or other such open formats, to connect to other network software tools to gather information or configuration would solve several of these challenges without burdening the existing PLC or controller logic. In other words, these types of interfaces can connect your machine directly to an MRP or similar enterprise-level system which would make production floors much more efficient for quick changeovers.
Capability for asset tracking, and quick troubleshooting: These features become important when there are hundreds of parameters changing and configurations evolving as your system becomes smarter and more efficient. To ensure right things are happening down the line, error-proofing your system becomes essential, and this involves additional information tracking. So the systems or solutions you choose should have these features.
Scalability for the future: This characteristic can be interpreted in many different ways. But, in this blog it refers to adding features and functions as the need arises and building in capability to adapt to these changes is needed so that you are not starting from scratch again when the business needs to evolve again.

So, as we move into this new era of manufacturing, it is important to understand what the “ready for IIoT” tag on the device you are investing in means, and how it is helping you become more efficient or helping you connect to your customer one-on-one. Using IIoT to implement an ‘Enable and Scale’ plan would be the best way to meet the ever-evolving needs for the plant floor.

To learn more about IIoT and Industry 4.0 visit www.balluff.us.

IO-Link Scalability Animation Video

How can I use IO-Link in my application? How is IO-Link scalable? If these are questions you still have, watch this animation describing the scalability of IO-Link. To learn more about Balluff’s IO-Link offering, click here